Welcome to the Piano World Piano ForumsOver 2 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

I don't remember if Dewster's analyzed any of the Roland models that has the supernatural sound. If yes, whether it's passed with flying colors like it should according to the YouTube infomercial above?

---------------------------------------------- Roland RD-700GX with K-RD700GX1 expansion ----------------------------------------------FILE & SETUP: - dp_bsd_v1.4_Roland_RD-700GX_K-RD700GX1_SuperNATURAL-Grand_Piano_no_sympres.mp3- Recorded by "sandord".PROS:- Beautiful long natural-sounding note decay (decay times on the order of Pianoteq).- Large dynamic range (~47dB, vel=1:127).- No audible looping.- Visually, the notes look similar to conventional length attack samples seamlessly blended with something like long loop samples. Not clear what the process is.- No visible or audible stretching, notes look random in the wave and phase views.- No visible or audible velocity switching.- Very smoothly blended timbre variation with velocity.- Responds to partial pedaling, centerpoint of this effect is with pedal mostly down.- Pedal up sounds like realistic string damping rather than a knock.- Sympathetic resonance (in-line effect?).CONS:- Can't detect key up or pedal down sounds in DPBSD MP3 file for some reason.OTHER:- Probably good enough to realistically record solo.- MP3 levels: peak @ -3dB, noise floor @ -81dB.- Some gated digital bleed-thru at the noise floor that comes and goes (PC?).- Date reviewed: 2010-03-01.

Roland has done a couple of videos like this, boldly highlighting the lame compression techniques of the bad old days.

Over at the Roland Clan forums people seem to like the RD-700GX SN expansion. Though with only 64MB to work with on an SRX card, I wonder if there is enough richness and variability to keep them happy long-term. It must take a lot of processing to cram multiple pianos into that small of a space.

And I know they have a fair amount of NRE tied up in it, but and $300 USD for 64MB is just outrageous.

1. I would be most grateful for DPBSD MP3 samples of the following instruments:

- Yamaha P-85- Yamaha NP-30- Korg SP-250- Korg LP-350

If you want to help the DPBSD project by contributing these samples but feel technically challenged by the procedure, the readme file at the Share Point has instructions, and you can also PM me and I'll walk you through any problems you might experience.

2. I would also like to hear from everyone regarding which DPs in particular they are personally interested in seeing run the DPBSD gauntlet.

Thanks to jazzist for three DPBSD MP3 files of the latest Galaxy II pianos utilizing the Kontakt 4 player.

The first one to be reviewed is the "1929 German Baby Grand" sample set, which is actually a Blüthner 150. This is an unlooped, unstretched (fully sampled) instrument with at least 11 velocity layers that I can detect. The pedal down sympathetic resonance sound nice, but I can't hear any key down sympathetic resonance. It also has a lot of sustain pedal issues, failing most of the tests associated with it, even partial pedaling. The note decays are long and realistic, and the incidental noises like key-up and pedal up/down are well done.

even though the Galaxy II Samples are played in Kontakt 4 it is NOT the Galaxy II K4 Version!!! It is still the "old" Galaxy II. I will upload the II.4 Version as soon as it will be delivered to me.Even though SSR is on its volume was set at 0, this explains the missing string resonance, new samples are on the way, sorry for that.

I'm normally better about running these things by the person who submits the MP3, it's the fault of my laziness that I didn't do it in this situation - sorry everyone and particularly to you jazzist. We'll get this straight.

I'm normally better about running these things by the person who submits the MP3, it's the fault of my laziness that I didn't do it in this situation - sorry everyone and particularly to you jazzist. We'll get this straight.

I can vouch for this when Dewster did my MP3 analysis. He kept me informed every step of the way, and then some.

I hope it's not a huge off-topic and I am very close to ordering a Kawai CA63 (after long research journey) and I am wondering how the WAV on USB recording is implemented on that piano? The comment above made by Dewster makes me think it's not actually a direct digital rendering of the ROM-samples (plus reverb, etc.) but is rather an audio recording from the audio-out bus. What do you think? I am not sure if I should post in that topic, so I may create that question in an entirely new topic for Kawai James to answer if he has that information.

It's an internal audio recording of what you actually play. I don't think this is an digital - analog - digital thing, but I'm not sure. It's just recorded on the USB drive you have inserted into the USB port, for both WAV and MP3 recording. I find the WAV recording of very high quality.

I hope it's not a huge off-topic and I am very close to ordering a Kawai CA63 (after long research journey) and I am wondering how the WAV on USB recording is implemented on that piano? The comment above made by Dewster makes me think it's not actually a direct digital rendering of the ROM-samples

It very well could be a recording of the ROM samples, if the samples were 12-bits. A noise floor of 72 dB is exactly what you'd get by direct recording of 12 bit samples